Quote

Ain't nuthin like ridin' a finehorse in a new country- Augustus McCrae – Lonesome Dove

Monday, September 21, 2015

Fire Mountain Obstacle Course

Parking meadow~

It was foggy, cold & damp when I went up to the barn to get Farah. Janelle had planned a Saddle-Up get together at Fire Mountain Friesians & Trail Training. By the time I was three miles up the road, the sun had broken through the fog! We met at the Starbucks off Cook Rd. & headed up from there. Ten miles from I-5 to the farm.

Just part of the obstacle course~

Since this was the first visit for several of us, we had the mandatory orientation class first. The cost for this is $30. with a $10. haul in fee. The benefit, is that once you have taken the orientation class - for any future visits all you pay is the haul in fee! You can take your horse & practice as much as you like, any day of the week!

Janelle on Duke pony a friends horse - coming out of the water obstacle :-)

Most of us started with our horses in-hand. Marilyn gave us some really great direction & guidance - plus a good description of how to approach each obstacle.

Checking out the noisy barrel :-)

Farah remembered her prior expericnce with obstacles, trying to avoid those she doesn't like & rushing the ones she was familiar with :-) She even tossed in a buck for flourish upon leaving the teeter-totter :-)

Farah with the ball~

Once I was in the saddle though - she did great! Stopping in the middle of the Cowboy Curtain when I asked her, backing out of it etc. She really enjoyed the ball! Figured it out right away & tried to bite it :-) By early afternoon, I was ready for lunch - so we went back to our trailer. Several were leaving, but I wanted to see what the trails looked like.

Heading up~

We followed the path around the course, then went under the power lines & soon found a logging road. It ended & there was a trail. The trail ended at another logging road. We followed it up & up & up. No views & I wanted to see a view!

Owl!

I'd stopped to adjust my saddle pad - when this guy flew out over us! At first I thought he was a hawk, but as he turned to perch up here, I could see that he was a big owl! Joyce always loves seeing owls & I instantly thought of her & wished she were with us!

This was as far up as we got before reaching a dead end

Soon, we came to a very large pile of gravel & the end of the road. Zoomed in a little, we could see the top of the mountain.

View~

As we turned back, standing in my stirrups - we did get a view! My Garmin stats said that we'd climbed to 1,083 feet. On our way down Lynn called me, she was back from her ride with friends & saw that my rig was the only one left in the meadow! Thanks for checking up on me Lynn!

At the back gate~

We got back down, found the back gate & took a little off-shoot trail that went toward the river that we could hear. I was really curious, since most of the creeks & little rivers are so dry this year, yet I heard rushing water.

Full of glacial silt

It was Beautiful! Just beautiful to see so much running water, but I realized seeing the gray color of the water, that it was full of glacial silt... This can't be a good thing... I think it means that the glaciers on Mt. Baker are melting down to nothing... There were piles of gray slit along the banks of the river...

Where we were~

Back at Fire Mountain, I zoomed in to see the same clear-cut that we'd spotted from the mountain. I'd love to come back & do some more exploring to see if we could get to the top. We were indeed the last rig there by the time we got back :-)

1 comment:

That's such a nice trail course with lots of variety isn't it? I rode Sugar a ways up behind the course at orientation too but it was really wet and rainy so didn't go too far but I would love to explore a little more back there. I've got several gift certificates for free haul in if you are ever up here again and want to do some exploring :)

Albert Borgmann, Crossing the Postmodern Divide, 1992

You cannot remain unmoved by the gentleness and conformation of a well-bred and well-trained horse -- more than a thousand pounds of big-boned, well-muscled animal, slick of coat & sweet of smell, obedient and mannerly, and yet forever a menace with it's innocent power and ineradicable inclination to seek refuge in flight, and always a burden with its need to be fed, wormed, and shod, with its liability to cuts and infections, to laming and heaves. But when it greets you with a nicker, nuzzles your chest, and regards you with a large and liquid eye, the question of where you want to be and what you want to do had been answered.

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January 1, 2013

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I enjoy riding whenever & wherever I can, then blogging about it!Time with our grand-kids tops my list - the gift of old age! Of course anything about horses, Photography, the Great Outdoors, never-ending work of keeping up a woodland garden & Washington Native Plant promotion are a few of my personal interests.